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Darsh Seneviratne: From what you won’t forget, to who you will remember

Darsh Seneviratne

Brand ambassador for Nikon Australia

Age?

22

Where are you based?

Australia

How do you make a living?

Brand ambassador for Nikon Australia

What camera do you use?

Mamiya Rb67, Minolta SRT101, Nikon AF600

How has travel made an impact on your life?

Travelling has pushed me to constantly take photographs and steered me towards a life-long love of creative output and collaboration. It has also made me realize that it shouldn’t matter what the people around you are doing, all that matters in your short time on earth is the people you love, and the experiences you share with them. And photographs.

What is your relationship to travel/adventure, and what does it mean to you?

An adventure is anything from flying overseas to exploring the bush land over the fence. My ideal adventure would involve my best friends, a place we’ve never been before, a full esky, and the luxury of choosing whether to explore or to do absolutely nothing at all. Being able to save up, drop everything and travel for months is a privilege I take for granted so often, I’ve been trying to be more aware of how lucky I am. I like to keep a balance between visiting new places and old favourites; it keeps things fresh, whilst also forging emotional ties with locations that aren’t my place of birth.

American Spirits, please

I really enjoy spending time in the United States, and my work is heavily influenced by American youth culture and the idea of the ‘American Dream’. Driving around in Big Bear, a ski town just out of Los Angeles, I came across this house that just screamed USA at me. I would be content with life if I had a white weatherboard house with a large front porch, a Silverado in the driveway, and a black Labrador to go hiking with every other day.

Crows and cement

Jaffna was hit particularly hard by the 26-year civil war in Sri Lanka; still today the city is stuck in an unusual limbo between ruin and development. I tried to gain access to this abandoned cement factory through the heavily guarded main entrance however my tuk-tuk driver told me the guards said no one was allowed in due to the possibility of active land mines left over from the war. I went round to a side road that was unguarded; there was a flock of crows sitting in the bushes. I threw a rock on the path just as I took the photo.

Kandana coconut pickers

Down the road from my family house in Sri Lanka, these two men were gathering coconuts for sale. Each coconut was expertly judged; good ones went in the cart, bad ones on the dud pile. It’s the exact same process as it was fifty years ago, except with a bull and cart instead of a truck. Kandana, Sri Lanka

Snow Beach NY

A day after a huge snowstorm hit the city, closing all roads into and out of Manhattan, I caught the train out to Coney Island. It’s a pretty bleak place at the best of times, having been in various stages of repair after being damaged by Hurricane Sandy. The snow seemed to clean the area, covering up the beach except for the fake palm trees lining the shore. All whilst photographing, I had Ratking’s “Snow Beach” banging in my ear.

Sweltering Ceylon Sun

The waters in the Keerimalai Ponds supposedly have healing powers; from curing impotency in men and women, to transforming a princess who had the head of a horse into a beautiful human. There’s an unquestionable historical aura of the place, however once you pass the army checkpoints, you’ll find the water is mainly a massive relief

8th Av

New York is my favourite place in the world. From an inspirational viewpoint, it’s an endless giving tree. There’s nothing better than getting a dollar coffee and watching people, maybe eating some papaya king or a lamb gyros, or catching a train out to a new neighborhood every day. This was taken in Chelsea in the middle of winter, nearly a week after a blizzard hit the city.

Lambo at the Green Doctor

Venice Beach is an intoxicating strip of wealth and poverty, consumption, people, and quintessential California. For a twenty-year old Australian kid at the time it was pretty mind blowing.

Running from the storm

Canada has so many friendly beautiful people, plus Canadian maple creams from Timmy Hortons are the best donuts you can get. This was taken high above the town of Jasper in the Rocky Moutains region of Alberta, heading down from Whistlers Peak to shelter from an oncoming storm.

White wash

I was in Seattle and someone was yelling at me from their truck for stepping out in front of them. In my defence, it’s a pretty easy thing to do when you’re staring up at this.

Colour me in kindness

In the wake of the 26-year civil war ending, Sri Lanka is currently experiencing a drastic boom in tourism and wealth, with new buildings going up around Colombo and the smaller cities. Temples have always stood out in this country, even during the periods of war where dilapidated houses and empty blocks of land were all too common. This particular temple was in Jaffna, a town in the northern tip of the country that was heavily occupied by Tamil Tiger forces.

We live in a frame of mind which is determined by where and when we’re born and the kind of culture we are exposed to. Seeking what we might be outside of this frame is what I’m trying to do in my solo trips.

It’s been three years since I’ve been travelling alone. A lot of people ask whether I felt lonely during these trips. I went to the French Alps and stayed in a cabin alone for a month but felt neither alone nor scared. I’m surrounded by the splendour of nature and I meet beautiful and interesting people.

The greatest part of any adventure is the unknown: a real adventure comes from no plan, spontaneity in decision-making, meeting people from all walks of life, interacting with cultures or religions that you previously haven’t, and a sense of resetting your life with each new place or journey.

I spent years of my childhood pouring over atlases and leafing through National Geographic Magazines which ignited my travel lust. Experiencing different landscape, smells, sounds and cultures first hand makes the world seem both big and small.

Adventure has given me the opportunity to develop my character as a person and as a professional; discovering my interest in exploration came late on in my life, I was tired, impatient and my priorities were all wrong.

I am primarily interested in documenting the everyday world around me, with a particular interest in landscapes featuring human interventions that visually activate their surroundings in strangely compelling ways.

I try to go on longer trips at least once every other year and leep on any adventure that’s handed to me, both small and big ones. Without travelling I feel trapped. To see and experience new things makes life so much bigger and helps me to widen my mind and actually makes me feel more at ease with myself and life.

Travel has shaped who I am. I’ve spent most of my life chasing winters and snow. Now it’s good to live in one place but still be able to travel for work and for shorter travel missions. I guess now I seek out moments and light instead of snow.

For me, leaving the easy things behind, getting into situations that I’m not used is where it all starts. Maybe you’re not ready for it, or even intially interested in, but you go. And you figure it out along the way.

Adventure means getting out of your comfort zone. Lots good things in life can only happen after you do something uncomfortable.
Travel has completely changed my life in terms of how I see photography.

Travel has taught me to question things and keep curious. I’m constantly reminded that I actually don’t know that much; it’s a very humbling experience which both keeps me in check and open to new possibilities.

I think most of all, I am constantly pursuing new and different experiences, and travel is the most surefire way I’ve found so far that is guaranteed to play host to whatever types of new experiences you want to dive into!

Adventuring keeps the inspiration flowing for me. Either heading to new places or really exploring the areas that are close by its always great to get out and adventure somehow. Something to look forward to, to enjoy and then re-live, and do all over again!

Travel changes everything. Being on the road is so inspiring. There’s always new, refreshing things to see and capture. I love it. Most of the time I’m a homebody, but then I get cabin fever and have to see new things.

I take pictures like a tourist, mostly to create nice images and souvenirs but in a way, I feel that photography is a weak way to help you to remember. It creates images that become stronger than your memories and consumes them.

I believe travelling is the best form of education. You can get very isolated in the bubble you call your life and just getting out there and experiencing how others live theirs makes you very aware of the lovely diversity in the world.

It has opened me up to new places, new friends, and over all a new outlook on life. It has allowed me to be more confident in my decision-making and it has provided a new sense of adventure that I never had before.

I have not been in one place for more than 40 days at a time since I was 16. I like to spend 50% of the time on the road making new work and then the other 50% of the time in my studio working on the images.

Being away from your safety net for that long really makes you a more sympathetic person…I hope..I think. These days it’s shorter trips but I like to go out there you know. I feel like I get soft if I sleep in my own bed too many nights in a row.

Traveling is the best thing to achieve what some call enlightenment, not books nor teachers. Traveling since I was a little kid was the best thing that could ever happen to me, I thank my family for that.

Travel has really influenced a lot of my ideals and perspectives and has certainly given me a sharper sense of what’s actually important in life and what’s not. I find it incredibly easy to get clogged up in a lot of nonsense when I’m in the city.

Whether I was sleeping on the floor of a monastery in Tibet, at the age of sixteen, or wandering the souks of Damascus, or staying in a Yali tribal village in the highlands of West Papua, there was no location too off the beaten path or fellow human being too challenging with whom to communicate.

Traveling has enabled me the space to practice and embody my spiritual beliefs most seamlessly while exploring my freedom to new heights. I have found so much beauty in diversity while creating more space for heartfelt connections.

I spent my years in school dreaming of how to travel, so as soon as I formulated a plan, I did everything in my power to escape and hit the road. I find myself constantly in situations where I am learning both of the world and myself, and have based my life around being able to visit the places that inspire me.

The idea of searching for something new to discover always gives me something exciting to look forward to and work towards. Every adventure I embark on teaches something new, about myself, about cultures, and about the world.

There’s just this wanderlust inside of me that always makes me want to go to somewhere new. I love mountains and nature and wild places, so I try to travel to places with great natural wonders and diversity. For me there’s nothing better than exploring new places or hiking mountains together with close friends or family.

I’ve learned so much about the world through traveling. Bringing that knowledge (whether it’s how to make Pho, or what life is like on a ranch in Montana) back has made my life at home so much richer. I’ve always wanted to live a thousand different lives in a hundred different places. Traveling, and photography, let me do that.